


Side Effects of Sun Exposure

by ginger_mosaic



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angel Kisses, Freckles, Gardens, Gen, Kisses, Pet Names, Sunshine - Freeform, The Garden of Eden, hastur hates crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:28:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23602330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginger_mosaic/pseuds/ginger_mosaic
Summary: Crawly keeps coming back to Hell with these weird spots all over his corporation’s skin. Hastur and Ligur are on the case to figure out what the Heaven they are.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Hastur & Ligur (Good Omens)
Comments: 29
Kudos: 169





	Side Effects of Sun Exposure

Hastur hated Crawly. Had since they first crawled out of the lake of sulfur after the Fall. Or so he would tell the other demons. The reality was that Hastur wasn’t even aware of Crawly until the Dark Council decided to send him up to the Garden. Why the scrawny, snakey little nobody, Hastur would never understand.

When Crawly came back, the Dark Council lauded him. Offered him a Dukeship that the bloody idiot  _ refused _ . He told them all he’d rather be stationed on Earth. And since he did such a bad job with the humans in the Garden, they figured that was all right.

They even had a going away party for him. Hastur stood in the corner the whole time, sneering at everyone. [1] It wasn’t right. Crawly was a nobody. Hastur was pretty sure he was even a nobody before the Fall. He didn’t even see him around during the building of Hell; the blessed snake was probably just holed up somewhere, sleeping. When Hastur complained, Dagon gave the missing demon a commendation for sloth.

“Oi, what’s wrong with your corporation?” asked Ligur suddenly, and in the tight space of the party room made mostly of corners, everyone turned to look.

Crawly frowned. “What do you mean?”

Ligur gestured at his own corporation’s face. “You’ve got… spots. Didn’t have spots before.”

He was right. Hastur looked closer. Crawly’s pale corporation usually only sported scales here and there from his serpent form, but now he had these brown spots on his face.

Crawly raised a hand and touched his right cheek where the spots were. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah, I dunno. Probably some side effect from Eden or something.”

“‘s ugly,” said Ligur. Hastur liked Ligur. He was a bad sort of bloke, the kind of demon he thought everyone should aspire to be. Not like Crawly.  _ No _ demon should aspire to be like  _ Crawly _ , with his “Oh I’m the Serpent of Eden” nonsense and his  _ spots _ .

Crawly beamed at him.  _ Beamed _ . [2] “Thanks,” he said. Ligur grumbled and trudged into a corner, pushing another demon out of the way. The party was mostly over after that.

So Crawly, smug bastard, slithered back up to Earth and didn’t come back for a few decades.

* * *

The demon surprised him when he approached him on the wall, and so it was natural that Aziraphale surprised himself as well by shielding the demon with his wing. After a while of watching the humans trudge across the desert in the rain, Crawly shifted and fluttered his wings behind him, shaking off some of the water.

“I think it’s all right,” he said.

“Oh?” Aziraphale peered up at the sky. “I’m not sure it’s stopping anytime soon.”

“Well, getting a little wet isn’t the end of the world. Been wet before.”

“I don’t like it much,” said Aziraphale, shuddering. “Being damp. It makes me feel dreadfully heavy. And everything clings.”

Crawly shrugged. “Didn’t say I  _ like _ it.” He once again shrugged and shifted his wings. “Thanks, by the way.”

“For what?”

Crawly looked up at Aziraphale’s wing, which was still hanging over him, and then back to Aziraphale’s face.

“Oh. Yes. Of course.”

The demon looked back at the desert. The humans were nearly a speck on the horizon. Aziraphale would miss them in the Garden.

“Wanna give you something,” muttered Crawly after a while, looking down and shifting on his scaled feet.

“Oh, please don’t try to give me one of the fruits.”

Crawly actually laughed. “No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “This is something the humans gave me. Well, Eve did. She said it was a gift.”

Aziraphale looked at him and frowned. “What is it?”

“Here,” said Crawly, and he reached over and took Aziraphale’s hand. He hesitated for a moment, and then he lifted Aziraphale’s hand closer to his face and pressed his lips to the back of it.

Aziraphale’s corporation did something very strange in reaction to that. He wasn’t sure if it was something Crawly did, maybe some sort of curse or miracle, but he felt very warm and something like a gentle bolt of lightning shot up his arm. It was not altogether unpleasant.

“Oh,” said Aziraphale.

Crawly dropped his hand. “Er. Yeah.”

Aziraphale thought about rubbing his hand, but refrained. The feeling was still there, and he was rather afraid that touching his hand would make it go away. “What is it?”

“Eve called it a kiss,” said Crawly.

“A kiss?” Aziraphale thought for a moment. He had seen the humans pressing their lips to each other a few times. He hadn’t known it had a name. He flexed his fingers, remembering that the humans had indeed given each other kisses on the hand, as well as other places. “Where did she give it to you?” he asked.

Crawly patted his left cheek with a finger twice.

Aziraphale hummed. “That doesn’t seem fair,” he said, and then he leaned in and pressed his lips to Crawly’s right cheek. “There.”

Crawly’s corporation immediately flushed a pretty pink color. “Hey!”

“I was just evening it out,” said Aziraphale, straightening his robes. He wondered if Crawly felt the same warmth he had. “Doesn’t seem right that you have two sides of your face and she only gave you a kiss on one.”

Crawly’s nose wrinkled. “I only gave you one to pay you back because you sheltered me under your wing!” he said, pointing at Aziraphale’s wings.

Aziraphale folded them behind his back. “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “I do have a second hand.”

* * *

The next time Crawly bothered to show his face in Hell, he had more of those spots all over it.

Hastur hated them.

“It’s the sun,” he explained when asked. “Some humans with my coloring tan and burn under the sun, and some get these little spots.”

“So being in the sun gives you spots,” said another demon doubtfully. Hastur also had doubts.  _ He’d _ been up to Earth, and  _ he _ didn’t get any spots. Just a lot of glares and stones thrown at him.

Crawly shrugged. “Sometimes.”

Sometimes Crawly seemed  _ proud _ of the spots. Like they were a prize from being on Earth so much. The smug bastard turned out to be very bad with humans and had managed to cause a lot of trouble with them. The higher ups were pleased with him. Hastur was not.

Probably if Crawly wasn’t so blessedly  _ clean _ all the time, insistent on hiding his scales and wearing sharply pressed human’s clothes, no one would even  _ notice _ the spots. Hastur thought perhaps that was why he couldn’t notice any on himself, but when he asked Ligur to check after a few months up on Earth, he still didn’t have any.

The next time Crawly came back, he demanded to be called Crowley, and he had a whole smattering of spots across the bridge of his nose and both cheeks.

“Bloody Heaven, Crowley,” said Beelzebub, using his new name apparently, even though Hastur thought they should all refuse out of principle. “What izz going on up there to change your corporation thizz much?”

Crowley—ugh,  _ Crawly _ —only shrugged. “Sunshine did it,” he said.

And on it went. Every time he came down to Hell, he had more and more of those spots everywhere. His face, his neck, his shoulders, down his arms—everywhere. What they could see depended on whatever fashion the humans were wearing lately up there, but it was always clear there were  _ more _ of them. 

And all he would do was shrug and say, “Sunshine did it.”

Finally, after thousands of years of human “fashion,” the blessed snake finally covered mostly everything up, and Hastur didn’t have to look at the stupid spots all over him. Just on his stupid face, which would have been stupid regardless.

There was only one period where Crowley returned after about a century up on Earth with no new spots—and in fact, some of the old ones seemed to have faded quite a lot.

“Erm, been inside a lot,” he said.

Hastur was relieved and overjoyed that Armageddon was finally upon them, and he laughed when Beelzebub told him and Ligur that they needed to have Crowley deliver the Antichrist. He had figured out by then that Crowley’s greatest sin was sloth and that he didn’t much like to do demonic work at all. It was the only thing that explained Crowley’s incredibly strange approach to tempting humans. It lacked finesse, Hastur thought, and seemed to rely entirely on doing as little work as possible. The higher ups loved him for it, but Hastur hated it. Crowley was hardly a demon at all, in Hastur’s opinion.

The look on Crowley’s stupid, spotted face when they handed him the basket was priceless.  _ No wriggling out of this one _ , Hastur thought gleefully, still scowling on the outside of course. This was one demonic deed Crowley  _ had _ to carry out himself. Hastur got a sick pleasure out of watching him squirm.  _ Can’t sleep through this one _ . And perhaps in the battle something…  _ terrible _ would happen to the snake demon, and Hastur could be rid of him once and for all.

For eleven years, Crowley reported to Hell more often to give updates on the Antichrist, and he was spottier than ever.

“Oh, I’m spending a lot of time with sunshine,” said Crowley, adjusting his glasses. “And, you know, showing the Antichrist the world and all the nasty things in it that he should crush under his boot heel. It, um, happens. Sunshine did it.”

Dagon crossed their arms. “Does the Antichrist get these… spots, from sunshine?”

For some reason, Crowley’s corporation turned a little pink. “Oh, no. Well. His complexion isn’t, um, prone to them.”

Hastur didn’t much care about the Antichrist’s face, as long as it was more scowly than the Serpent of Eden’s.

On the Antichrist’s eleventh birthday, Hell was buzzing with energy [3]. Hastur awaited orders in his favorite lurking corner, rubbing his hands together and thinking of all the angels he would defeat in the War. [4]

“This is it, this is it,” he was saying to himself when Ligur found him.

“Hastur,” whispered Ligur, “I have to tell you something. It’s important.”

“The only important thing today is the War,” said Hastur. “Is it about that?”

Ligur shook his head and glanced around. Hastur straightened. It must be serious then, if Ligur would rather no one else hear.

“What is it, then?” said Hastur. “Spit it out.”

“The spots,” said Ligur. 

“ _ Spots _ ?” said Hastur. “What spots?”

“The ones on Crowley!” Ligur glanced around again and then leaned in. “I asked a human about them. She had them all over her face. Said they were called ‘freckles.’”

“Freckles.” Hastur scoffed. “Bloody typical, of course that flash bastard has a condition with a cutesy name.”

“She said they had another name, though,” said Ligur hurriedly. “That they were also called—”

But Hastur didn’t get to hear what else he might call the spots on Crowley’s face, for at that moment, Dagon arrived to give Hastur his orders: He was to take the Antichrist to Meggido and be there the moment Armageddon started.

It was the highest honor.

It turned out that the Antichrist  _ was _ scowlier than Crowley. It also turned out that the human child was not the Antichrist at all.

Crowley had fucked it up.

Of course he had. With his stupid  _ freckles _ and his flashy too-human style and his sunglasses and his sloth.

Hastur had new orders from Dagon: Destroy the demon Crowley.

“It will be my absolute pleasure,” he said, baring his teeth in what could only be called an approximation of a grin. He hadn’t had much practice smiling, after all.

He wouldn’t do much smiling ever again either. Ligur, the only demon he had ever rather liked, opened Crowley’s door and was immediately doused with holy water.

And thus, this secret died with Ligur, who didn’t quite manage to bring it up again in all the hubbub around Armageddon:

Freckles are also known as angel kisses.

* * *

It was a beautiful day in the garden.

Their garden, to be precise. They had built it together on the land around their small cottage in the South Downs. It had everything a garden should—vegetables to be sold at the local farmer’s market, fruit trees from which the village children could pilfer, and flowers galore for personal enjoyment. [5]

And there were, of course, apple trees.

Currently, Aziraphale and Crowley were nestled in a hammock hanging between two trees that would never complain about it. [6] Aziraphale had a book lying facedown on his chest. He had given up reading it in favor of listening to Crowley’s light humming and stroking his hair, which he had grown out long. It was such a lovely color in the sun—a shining dark red lit with gold. Everything about him was lovely, really.

Aziraphale took one of Crowley’s hands and massaged it gently with his thumb, exploring all of its ridges and muscles. Some of the freckles were fading, so Aziraphale lifted his husband’s hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it.

Crowley stopped humming. “Angel,” he said, with only a hint of a whine.

Aziraphale smiled and kissed his hand again. “I was thinking it might be nice to have some lemonade while we doze here,” he said.

Crowley sighed long-sufferingly, but Aziraphale turned it into a content sigh by turning and pressing a few kisses to his face instead. Crowley shifted and tipped his head back so that Aziraphale had no choice but to kiss his mouth, and they stayed like that for a while, just kissing languidly in the hammock, the summer breeze rocking them gently.

“Lemonade, dear?” asked Aziraphale after a while.

Crowley sighed again, his eyes closed. “Sure, Sunshine,” he said.

Aziraphale set about untangling their limbs so he could miraculously exit the hammock without upending it. He pressed one last kiss to Crowley’s forehead before he headed back to the cottage, and as he walked across the garden, Crowley began to hum again. When he was sure the angel was out of earshot (he was not), Crowley began to sing softly:

“You are my sunshine… my only sunshine… you make me happy… when skies are grey…”

* * *

[1] Everyone else was doing the same thing. It wouldn’t be a party in Hell if everyone weren’t just lurking in corners and drinking by themselves.[return to text]

[2] It was more like a knowing smirk, but to Hastur, it wasn’t scowly enough, so it might as well have been a beaming smile.[return to text]

[3] Granted, most of the buzzing was still coming from Beelzebub’s flies, but still. There was a lot of anticipatory energy going around.[return to text]

[4] And also a certain few demons he might do without.[return to text]

[5] “Personal enjoyment” was, of course, in the eye of the beholder. Crowley preferred to yell at them, though that had decreased over the years into light hissing. These days, it was a lot of “Good job”s and “You’re coming along all right, aren’t you”s.[return to text]

[6] A few years ago, one could have said they wouldn’t  _ dare _ to complain, but in recent years, everyone was much happier and more content.[return to text]


End file.
